


Be The Death of Me

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, non sburb au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You'd never believed that you would be the one to raise death's hand against him. It makes you feel ill. You know that your boss could be a slavedriver, could drive a hard bargain but--you didn't think he could be so needlessly cruel."</p>
<p>Dave Strider is a death god who has been tasked to kill the one that he loved most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be The Death of Me

**Author's Note:**

> "Sprites" and "elves" refer to these things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper-atmospheric_lightning

John is wrapped up in deep blue, the cloth so tight across his face that you can see nearly every indent underneath. You hold him splayed across your arms as you ascend the seemingly endless squares of stairs. The repetition of the white brick on the walls is beginning to make your eyes strain. 

The building is taller than any human could possibly imagine it to be.  It reaches far up beyond the clouds, into the domain of pseudo-space just below where the routines of sprites and elves flit in and out in flashes of maroon, where the Space Child dances death in her ruby red shoes. The thousands of stories that stretch up and beyond, that curve into the appearance of infinity; they are invisible to human eyes and impervious to their curiosities. 

The drone of your footsteps up and up the stairs numb your mind and prevent you from dwelling further on the fact that you are carrying the body of the only human you've ever stopped to care for in your long, long life. 

You eventually reach the summit. Setting John down for only a brief moment, you wrench the door open out onto the familiar rooftop. You reach down to pick up John again, settling him against your body. He's become far heavier than he was when you'd started climbing, which makes no scientific sense.  

You stride out onto the flat of the rooftop, assailed immediately by the rusty hum of the old generator in the corner. It's a welcome relief from the solitude of the stairway, and the silence that falls outside of the perimeter of the building. 

You walk to the very center of the rooftop, and there you set John down. You unwrap him like a present, eventually showing his pale face to the sky. 

You spread the ceremonial shroud out until the four corners are pointing to those of the rooftop, and then you sit a few feet away. And you begin to wait. 

You light up a cigarette that would've been extinguished in the absence of oxygen if the mechanics of yourself and your space obeyed any physical laws at all. Which they don't. The wind pushes the thin air around you, but none of it picks at your black clothes nor the smoke that spirals in a straight column up up, up, up--

You wonder what is taking the bastard so long. Omnipresence doesn't preclude laziness, you suppose. 

_Take him already, you swine. You piece of shit. Take the only thing that's ever mattered to me._

You never thought that one of your hits would turn out to be John. Of course you'd known that he'd die eventually. You'd known that one day someone would drag him up into the sky and leave you all alone to harvest the next crop and the next and the next and the next. 

But you'd never believed that you would be the one to raise death's hand against him. It makes you feel ill. You know that your boss could be a slavedriver, could drive a hard bargain but--you didn't think he could be so needlessly cruel.

No. That was a lie. Your boss wasn't cruel. It was the absence of cruelty, the absence of anything other than sheer practicality that put you and the others like you at odds with him and his methods.

John's time on the cosmic clock had been up, and you had been available. That was all there was to it. This wasn't punishment. This wasn't karma. This was duty. This was what your role in the machinations of the universe was. Whatever feelings you had on the matter couldn't change that. 

However, regardless of the merit of your emotions, you still possessed them. And so did the others in your master's employ. It was the way of your genesis. Your boss had never been born from a human, but you had. You had shreds of empathy and love still clinging to your fingers.  

You bury the dead cigarette into the concrete. The wind touches at John's face and spreads his hair across his forehead. 

You'd struck him with pneumonia. An acute case. He'd gone to bed coughing and never woken up. You'd dammed his lungs full of fluid and choked him in his sleep. You'd stayed up with your arms stretched across his stomach and your head on his chest. Your own sleep could wait for a time when John's breath had already worn out its sweetness. Your own sleep was being saved for the solitude you'd find at the base of the building. 

You cross your legs and balance your elbows on your knees. You wait, and wait, and wait. 

Eventually, John slowly starts fading away before your eyes. Disintegrating slow, frustratingly slow. Like the wind was fed up with picking at his clothes and hair and instead decided to wear away his skin. 

It's begun. But it's so damn slow. What the hell is your boss waiting for?

"Well?" You say aloud to the air. 

There's a moment of pause, as if the very atmosphere around you is holding its breath. Then there's a sudden shift and you can feel the energy intensify and take hold, making every last electron in the air seize and spasm in excitement. Below you can feel the forming supercell, and you're shaken from your seat as the foundation shudders. It's building, and you can feel it in your bones and you don't know why he is dragging this out, why he is making you suffer even more. 

"Well?  _What are you waiting for?!_ " You shout, angry tears beginning to brim in your eyes, and the second sound of your voice breaks the remaining calm. 

The sprite roars into life above you, and the red blinds you for a second as it envelops the entire rooftop. A chorus of heat washes over you and you're forced to close your eyes as the vault opens up and takes John into itself. 

The last thing you hear before it's over is the soft, sad sigh, and you know it's the Space Child. You don't see her, you almost never do. She's gone in a millisecond, along with the sprite and John's corpse. 

The shroud is left behind, with nary the rumpled imprint of John's body still present. 

You contemplate letting it go into the mystery of the mesosphere, but in the end you fold it up and take it with you. 

(That night you dream of a blue-eyed Breath Child that greets you soft at the building's summit.)


End file.
